FEMA ISN’T LISTENING. THE MAYOR ISN’T LISTENING. WHERE ARE THEY? PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE SHOULD SERVE THE PEOPLE.

Two months after Superstorm Sandy the disaster is not over and relief needs are still great. Homes are uninhabitable with black mold taking hold, heat and sanitation are still absent in many places. Yet the government response has been glaringly absent. As with Katrina and other recent disaster-and-recovery events city, state and federal agencies have handed off reconstruction resources and responsibility to corporations and markets.

That hand-off has pushed affected people further out of their communities, further into crisis and vulnerability, and further from the decision-making tables that allocate public resources. Where government has failed, Occupy and other groups stepped in.

But we now understand that climate change has turned a corner: we will be hard hit again by extreme weather events. And so we ask whose interests our government serves? Is it polluters, predatory lenders, and disaster profiteers? Or can we build a stronger, better, resilient New York where all of us, regardless of race, class or power, can weather future storms?

12PM COMMUNITY RALLIES

Staten Island
1128 Olympia Boulevard
Across from St. Margaret Mary’s Church

5PM CITYWIDE RALLY

1 Comments

Occupy has some legit role in offering the alternative solutions that can get out ahead now that it can be predicted with some possibility of public belief that the reality of future Sandy-like storms is worth thinking about.

What's the sensible solution form that does not reaffirm an opinionated administration's view of who should benefit and how when major climate-honest planning is called for and reparations are also immediately needed? We know that existing practice tends to privatize profit rising from calamity.

What is the funded community solution? Community associations applying for status to function as banks, as has been suggested in Chicago as a model idea for pulling title to foreclosed homes away from existing private for-profit banks that don't improve them immediately, seem to be a reasonable catch-all home so people in stricken locations can organize with their own assets for their common good. Why not push also for block grants from the feds. Who's on the side of your stricken communities?

By this means Occupy could get to be a lifeblood sourcing mechanism without having to become structural itself.

Have you thought of that? And, have you thought about the fact that doing something of this kind, and particularly if it happened to necessitate granting legislation in Washington, would be a quaintly poignant means for Occupying the territory now predominated by those so enthusiastic about the big bull in Manhattan? You certainly have the smart enough people to forward progress in the halls of DC. Some might argue that legislative action, irrespective of party affiliations, is a sensible step for Occupy beyond shitting on their sidewalks (which of course they do also deserve).